EPCAM and breast carcinoma: Using these criteria, all 30 healthy individuals tested were found to be negative, while in the group of early breast cancer patients, CTC were detected in 42/254 patients (16.5%) (Table 2) with the positive expression rates of 3.5% for GA733-2, 5.5% for MUC-1 and 10.2% for HER-2 (Table 3).